29 January 2015

While - in the UK at least - the late seventies is commonly regarded as being the birth of the 'proper' punk indie label and DIY pressed singles, and the mid-eighties is regarded as the explosion of the indie-pop sound, you'd be a fool not to look at what went on in between those two poles. The post-punk period is awash with unexpected indie riches, as the lovingly compiled "Indie Scene" series of compilation CDs sought to prove, and actually arguably surpasses the twee end of the spectrum in terms of sonic innovation. Where indie-pop sweetly jangled, post-punk indie often kicked like a mule.

Take Out On Blue Six, for example. Consisting of Mike Daly on drums, Carl Marsh on guitar, Kate Sekules on vocals, Geoff Woolley on keyboards and Nigel Holland on bass and vocals, this was their sole single, a three track self-produced effort. The blurry sleeve and brilliantly minimalist plasticrap label give no clues about the contents, but waiting in the grooves of the A-side is one of the most aggressive pieces of jagged funk you're likely to hear. "Party Mood" furiously throws around discords and barking terrier vocals to a rhythm that's immediately infectious, and the whole concoction is utterly impossible to forget. They also sound as if they'd be unforgettable live, although whether Hawkwind fans would agree is another matter - once when they were unfortunate enough to support that act, a hail of beer cans rained down over them throughout their set. Kate Sekules apparently dealt with the problem by finishing with a song whose lyrics largely consisted of "Dirty smelly greasy apes".

Besides this single, Out On Blue Six recorded two sessions for John Peel (one in 1980, the other in 1981) and apparently little else. You would have hoped that a more organised indie label could have found space for them on its roster, but it would seem that nobody bit, and this is their sole physical product.

Kate Sekules eventually became a writer and a professional boxer, a role perhaps well suited to someone who had to deal with petulant Hawkwind fans. Her book "The Boxer's Heart" chronicles her life and career. She was also once travel editor of "Food and Wine" magazine, but presently runs a vintage clothing business in New York.

The whereabouts of the rest of the group is not known, but I would be really interested to know if they recorded anything else which simply never got released. I wouldn't mind lending an ear to those John Peel sessions as well if anyone has them digitised.

Meanwhile, any similarities between the band's name and either Mark Radcliffe and Marc Riley's Radio One show or the title of a defunct blog by Tim Worthington are surely coincidental.

25 January 2015

Ballads dripping with syrupy strings dominated the mid-seventies, feeling like luxurious attempts for variety show slots on television or the lighter moments of radio. Many were successful, continuing the thirst the British public continued to have for gentle pop - Engelbert Humperdinck beating The Beatles to number one in 1967 was no one-off fluke - but still more fell utterly by the wayside and this solitary release by Art Nouveau falls into the latter category.

Where this differs greatly is the subject matter, being a vaguely disconcerting ballad about one 25 year old man's smothering mother who takes care of his every domestic need. It's creepy enough to be interesting. "You are spoiling me mar-maarr" politely enunciates the vocalist at the beginning over gentle piano lines, before going on to speculate about how a man who throws his clothes all over the floor for his mother to collect could ever end up married. Cheer up, mush, there are plenty of slovenly women in the world too. Like Pink Floyd's "Mother" set to a gentle string arrangement, it's a queer fish in the waters of MOR pop. The songwriting credit goes to a Meehan, and I'm wondering whether Tony Meehan of The Shadows could be responsible - but I've no evidence.

Likely to be of greater interest to your average "Left and to the Back" reader is the flip, a spirited and sprightly cover of the "Follyfoot" theme, "Lightning Tree".

Art Nouveau are something of a mystery, having no recorded history. This would appear to have been their only single, and it's impossible to deduce whether they were a group consisting solely of session personnel or a gigging club/ cabaret act. After this track failed, they were clearly given no further opportunities to professionally record.

22 January 2015

"Dancing In The Moonlight" really is a song which took years, arguably decades, to reach its full "classic" potential. A minor cult hit for the American band Boffalongo, whose member Sherman Kelly penned it, it slept soundly for another couple of years until Sherman's brother Wells, who drummed for King Harvest, introduced it to the band in 1970. Smelling a top tune immediately, they covered it and watched happily as it climbed to Number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Before King Harvest got their mitts on it, though, the remnants of the Tonbridge, Kent based group Jason Crest recorded it for British release. Consisting originally of Terry Clarke on lead vocals, Terry Dobson on lead guitar, Derek Smallcombe on rhythm guitar, Ron Fowler on bass, and Roger Siggery on drums, they had a long and chequered history. Formed in 1964 as The Spurlyweeves, changing their name to the Good Time Brigade in 1967, then finally Jason Crest upon earning a contract with Philips, the cult popsike legends had cut many fantastic sides by the end of the sixties, not least the semi-legendary, psychedelic doomy screamer "Black Mass" - once heard, never forgotten. Sales had not been on their side, however, and after five years of loyal but presumably skint service the lead singer Terry Clarke quit in 1969. Shortly prior to this, bassist Ron Fowler had left to be replaced by John Selley.

Rather than giving up entirely, the group quickly recruited Brian Prebble from the Riot Squad, and drafted in Brian Bennett from Leviathan to add an additional guitar to the mix. Philips gave them the heave-ho, the new moniker High Broom was adopted, and a contract to produce one LP for Island Records was signed. However, aside from this version of "Dancing In The Moonlight" and its flip, nothing else emerged from the agreement. Stylistically it is impressive to hear how the band had managed to jump from their slightly woozy, small-town back-street alley popsike into a harder, rougher country rock sound. This sounds so damn North American that you'd never guess any member of Jason Crest had anything to do with it, and it possibly could have been a hit under the right circumstances. The flip "Percy's On The Run" also rocks out, being about as psychedelic as a bottle of sour mash bourbon.

Presumably the under-whelming performance of this single lead to Island executives wondering whether they'd actually signed a lame duck, and nothing more was heard from the act. A pity, because Jason Crest at their best were a proposition to be reckoned with - but having undergone such an extreme series of line-up changes, it's arguable that what we're listening to here is effectively an entirely different act, and one which may never have scaled the same creative heights.

As for "Dancing In The Moonlight", it's deathless. Toploader's chirpy cover of it stormed the British charts in 1999, and it wound up as a prominent feature to the soundtrack of Chris Morris's satire on home-grown Islamic terrorism, "Four Lions". Whether you're celebrating the fact that you're about to bomb the London Marathon, or just partying in general, it's become an uptempo summer fun record for all ages. Whether that's what Sherman Kelly ever envisaged is besides the point, but I'm sure the royalties must keep him relatively content - and what is fascinating (to me, if no-one else) is the way each cover version of it seemed to add extra elements to the previous attempt, gradually shunting the track away from its rugged beginnings into a lighter, more frivolous sound.

18 January 2015

So I'm in this small but fashionable club in Central London, a late-night watering hole with an expensive bar. It's teeming with young men, some wearing sagging trousers, who are either ludicrously blitzed on cocaine or so obnoxious and arrogant they don't even need to touch the stuff (it's hard to decide what conclusion about their behaviour is worse). There's not enough dancing, but plenty of glares, sharp elbows and shoulder barges. It's like a cramped, darkened pen filled with angry Stags locking horns, testing out the strength of the competition.

A beefy, blonde-haired wide-boy tumbles down the stairs by the entrance near where I'm standing waving his arms and shouting "EVERYBODY OUT OF THE FUCKING WAY!" As he passes me, he sneers and says "I was only fucking joking! It's a joke! Jesus, maaaan!" then rolls his eyes, staggering off to the venue's soundtrack of chart-based EDM and the aggressive, commercial end of Hip-Hop. It's the kind of place where you'd guess Dapper Laughs is considered a "legend" by 75% of the clientele.

So, you could say I was there against my will. Not my kind of place. I'm too old, not enough of a thrusting young banker, estate agent or salesperson, and too badly in need of a carefree good time and not a slightly threatening environment full of Alpha A male poseurs. But then something funny happens. I hear a slightly Orange Juice styled guitar line. A familiar thudding bassline throbs out of the PA. Then a squeaky synth frill. Then the opening lines "Sometimes I get so low/ there's only one place I can think of to go…" The DJs dance along in the booth to this one-hit wonder relic from 1980, and there are no protests - people carry on having their own peculiar version of a good time, and the record fills the venue, offering light relief by actually being a good track (as well as the irony of the fact that this club is about as far flung from my idea of "The Twilight Cafe" as it can get).

I realise it's the third time I've witnessed "Twilight Cafe" getting revived in an unexpected setting in a year. Once was in another much more welcoming club where retro 60s and 70s tunes were more the order of the day, the other when I witnessed legendary Scottish pop band Bis revive the track. From a DJ'ing perspective, it's a ripe pick (I own it myself, and have indeed played it out myself). You can find copies in second-hand shops for 50p. It's seldom heard on the radio these days, but familiar enough to people who know their pop music to get a few feet straight on the dancefloor, and strong enough that the brilliant and simple persuasive beat can coax the floating voters too. A win/win situation. DJs are vain enough that they enjoy getting a chance to do something both populist and slightly unexpected
at the same time, and if they can do it and get change from a pound coin, then they are truly blessed. (entry continues below)

The sudden reappearance of the track got me thinking about Susan Fassbender and who she was, and what she did next. I'd seen a clip of her on TOTP2 on BBC2 some years before, smiling prettily behind long flowing hair and glasses, looking pleased as punch to be on the show. Steve Wright, BBC Radio 2's well known hunk, offered little information but mocked her in his intro, stating that she looked like a doctor's receptionist.

I realised I'd better dig around online. And the truth is, there's not much out there, a few scraps of interviews and YouTube clips aside. It would seem that Fassbender, born as Susan Whincup in Bradford, was something of a minor prodigy, being an accomplished musician on the piano, clarinet and timpani by the age of thirteen. She eventually met Kay Russell who became her songwriting partner, and they wrote furiously together, getting signed to the small indie Criminal Records for their efforts in the process.

"Twilight Cafe" was written in response to the label's demands to have something that sounded more like a hit, and punched far above its weight, a rare case of the artist out-scoring the record company's abilities. The track took on such a strong life of its own that Criminal signed it over to another party, CBS, who provided it with a safer journey into the Top 40.

In a fairer world, Fassbender and Russell would have been set up for at least the next few years. "Twilight Cafe" would have been the top ten hit it deserved to be and not the number 21 mini-hit it became, and further hits would have flowed forth. But things went dumper-bound very quickly. The slightly reggae-tinged follow up "Stay" failed to even enter the top 75 despite some media publicity, perhaps partly due to the decision to credit the track to the garbled sounding Fassbender Russell. Chirpy in a slightly too plasticky, poptastic way, it lacked the cool and poise of "Twilight Cafe" and perhaps also partly suffered as a result of that.

Third single "Merry Go Round" was released under the Susan Fassbender name again, and is a greater success artistically speaking, managing to pull off the hat-trick of being poppy, mournful and pretty damn good, focussing its lyrics on unemployment and anonymity. The sound again veers towards the alternative pop music dominant during the period, with a keyboard riff that wouldn't have sounded completely out of place on a Teardrop Explodes single. Despite that, its failure was the final straw for CBS, who sent the two women packing without honouring a release of their album. They failed to get signed elsewhere, eventually drifted apart to become wives and mothers, and the game was very clearly up. It's hard to stay involved with writing and performing music even when you have some spare hours in the day - parenthood often eliminates those possibilities entirely.

Then around five years ago, Kay Russell unexpectedly re-emerged with the news that she was going to put some the pair's demos out for general release on iTunes. Following a lot of the usual tedious legal to-ing and fro-ing with the music industry, the album of demos emerged in 2012, and in places really underlines some other slices of goodness we were denied. In particular, "Eliliath" - the track below -manages to yet again pull off the trick of being hauntingly catchy, focussing on the delusions of either a mentally ill person or a genuine psychic seeing a world others "cannot see". "You call me stupid or psychotic or both" spits Fassbender, "drug me up… until I feel I'm dead". Delicate glockenspiel lines dance under airy synths and an insistent chorus. It's poppy, celebratory and yet doomed sounding at the same time, in love and hate with its subject matter. (entry continues beneath YouTube clip).

Tragically, Fassbender committed suicide in 1991. There is no information available on what happened, and to all previous online enquiries a daughter of hers has confirmed her death but asked not to be engaged in any further conversations on the topic. This should be respected. It doesn't seem as if we'll ever know about what else she wrote, recorded or did privately until a time when someone close to her feels ready to communicate something - and that may very well never happen.

What we do have, however, is what's out there, and what Kay Russell - whose own contributions are at least half of the story - has very generously released to the world. While Fassbender usually got the sleeve credit, it would appear that they were a songwriting duo in the classic sense of the phrase, able to create wonders together that they struggled to produce to the same effect while apart. "It was a bit weird and strange," Russell once remarked, "we seemed to be able to write in ANY style, when we were writing together".

As ever, it's tempting to speculate on what went wrong with their careers. Possibly the enthusiastic ordinariness of Russell and Fassbender seemed at odds with both the studied post-punk cool of the times and the glossy sheen of new pop. The pair do look slightly more seventies than eighties in some YouTube clips, and while that might not have mattered too much initially while they existed on the cusp of the two decades, the image might have eventually grated on the cooler kids in their darkened nightclubs. Behind the hard hitting eighties production there's also a tint of the classic seventies singer-songwriter craft, which is no crime at all, but may have seemed slightly too knowing, introspective and intricate for the decadent pop scene that dominated at the time.

I'm guessing wildly, of course. It's all I can do. Whatever the reasons, what we have is all we've got, and it's better than you'd think, and deserves a lot more written about it than anyone has so far bothered to do. Consider this my little attempt to nudge a few more people in the right direction.

15 January 2015

Of all the songwriters I've bothered to feature on L&TTB, Kenny Young is probably one of the most criminally under-referenced despite his success rate. Most readers will be only too aware of his back catalogue when the names of his tracks are tripped off the tongue - among his successes are the evergreen classic "Under the Boardwalk", and besides that there's "Captain of Your Ship", "Ai No Corrida", and the rather ignored (by the standards of most top ten hits) "Just One More Night" by Yellow Dog. Lovers of popsike will also know him as the man responsible for Blue Yoghurt's "Lydia", or perhaps San Francisco Earthquake's "Fairy Tales Can Come True" which I featured on "Pictures of Marshmallow Men". He's surely due some sort of career round-up compilation, but nobody seems to be particularly embracing that idea with any enthusiasm.

If we're talking about longevity which crosses several decades, what's noticeable about most sixties songwriters and session men is that diversity of approach was often their only means of survival. Whilst the bands of that era may have huffed and puffed and refused to dilute their "sound, man", songwriters relying on hits to pay the mortgage (and without a troupe of fans to keep them clothed) mixed and matched styles to suit the times. So it proved with Kenny Young, who by the late seventies was incredibly quick off the bat with a distinctly New Wave sound for his project Yellow Dog, ostensibly a studio-bound concoction of session men with him on lead vocals.

Nobody was fooled, of course - do you really think those beards would have been accepted by the punks of the time? - but one hit was enjoyed by the makeshift band before diminishing returns set in. Follow-up single "Wait Until Midnight" only got to number 54, and "Little Gods" failed to chart at all. That's a pity, since for my money this is the most interesting record of the lot, perhaps capturing the jerky quirkiness of New Wave rather too well for its own good, sounding marginally more like an early XTC B-side or an unheard track by The Vapors than a potential smash hit. Many music industry types and bands were quick to write off the punk movement as a pathetic fad, but I can sense a certain degree of affection for the New Wave genre seeping out of these grooves, and if forced to do a blind guess, you'd never realise a seasoned Brill Building songwriter was behind it.

You can read an interview with Kenny Young here, which really hammers home the sheer quantity of recordings he's been behind. That said, I'd quite like to forget I ever heard the B-side to this particular single "Fat Johnny", which is yet another aggravating example of a songwriter filling up the flip by attempting to be some sort of parodying stand-up comedian. Save the jokes and the humour for the ladies at the bar, please.

And yes, the record really does glow in the dark, too. Once when my bedside lamp was broken, I placed it near the door in my bedroom so I could find the exit easily in the dark if I wanted to go to the toilet at some unexpected hour. It worked, I tell you, and perhaps even prevented a drunken urine-stained pyjama type incident.

11 January 2015

Saga was one of the earliest budget record labels to be launched in the UK, beginning in the late fifties as an outlet for cut-price classical music albums. The success of that venture caused Saga to dip its toes into other waters, sometimes with results that caused them to scurry back to the shore in a gibbering panic (the relative failure of Joe Meek's Triumph label, a subsidiary of Saga, is the stuff of collector's legends) and on other occasions with modest success. Perhaps the label's management also took their cues from Meek when they began shoving promising young bands in the unlikely environment of a North London infant school hall at night to cheaply record the results as rush-released bargain basement LPs. Do check out The Magic Mixture's "This Is The Magic Mixture" if you get the chance - despite the lo fidelity nature of the work, it contains some fine work, not least the haunting, empty school assembly hall echo of "Moonbeams".

The "Big Chief" offshoot appears to have been the label's experimental foray into the territory of reggae, and lasted for a handful of releases before disappearing. The instrumental "Cool Coffee" is sharp enough that it's still talked about fondly by collectors and DJs now - it's roughly recorded and sounds a couple of years older than its release date, but contains an insistent, nagging keyboard line and throbbing bassline.

The B-side is a quickie cover of "The Israelites" featuring Al Barnett on lead vocals. This copy is horribly scuffed and scratched, I'm sorry to say, but I doubt that anyone will think it's an essential addition to their mp3 folder.

As for Saga's excursions into reggae, they continued again in 1975 when they successfully took over the Trojan group of labels, getting seriously involved in the business of marketing the genre as opposed to attempting low-budget cash-ins.

8 January 2015

I'm enough of a Beatles bore to continue to find the cornucopia of cover versions of their work fascinating. True, most are flawed and a horrible waste of vinyl, but once every so often I stumble on a relatively obscure cut which is actually worthwhile.

This version of "Come Together", for instance, sounds like The Beatles in a parallel seventies universe. The original was reasonably raw and rugged, but there's a smooth and slithering creepiness here which highlights a sinister side I never sensed in the "Abbey Road" cut. The piano chimes, the guitar wails a new riff which wouldn't sound out of place in an early evening crime drama, and the backing rhythm cooks a tauter, meaner groove. Perhaps more crucially, the changes to the template are subtle rather than dominating, meaning you're nudged closer to what "Come Together" might have become as opposed to listening to a complete reinvention.

I'm a bit confused about who Graffiti were. There is still an Iron Mountain, Michigan based covers band operating on the gig circuit going under that name, who boast that they can copy the styles and sounds of any number of popular bands, The Beatles included. It would seem that they are one and the same, but how they came to record a version for "Come Together" for the BBC, who then issued it on their subsidiary label Beeb, is a mystery at the moment. A few enquiries online lead me to believe that an entire album of Beatles covers by the band was planned and then dumped, but all this is lacking what Wikipedia would naggingly refer to as "citation". If anyone has any further clues or even hard facts, I'd love to hear from them.

4 January 2015

From the fifties right through until the nineties, highly popular television shows tended to begat novelty singles dedicated to them, some official, many unofficial. In most cases, it's the unofficial ones that tend to be the most peculiar and therefore entertaining, albeit for all the wrong reasons. Tim Worthington has done a fine job of championing The Go Go's "I'm Gonna Spend My Christmas With A Dalek" for years now, a sixties cut whose idea of a dalek voice sounds more like Sir Patrick Moore doing an impersonation of a robot. Supremely ridiculous stuff.

"Dearest Emma" by The Londonairs isn't quite in that camp, but as a tribute to Emma Peel of "The Avengers" it is slightly and knowingly silly. "We love all your kinky clothes/ you dress fit to kill/ we'd fight for the right to be the guy with the bill" they chirp rather sinisterly. "We go pale at the things you do to red blooded men/ now that just ain't right to us/ But do it again-". Right. Basically, this is the sound of two session men singing about how they're tempted to have a fiddle around inside their trousers whenever "The Avengers" comes on the telly. Cut through to its core, and that's all this record is saying, complete with a Carnaby Street swing of a backing. If nothing else, you can surely admire its honesty. In the days before Twitter, some comfort could be drawn from the fact that at least you could get your messages of appreciation across to actresses you fancied via the recording studio.

Sadly, "Dearest Emma" didn't get much of a chance to be heard by Diana Rigg aka Emma Peel. The use of the fanfare from the "The Avengers" theme at the start of the single was unauthorised, and no sooner had Decca managed to get a batch of copies to the shops than they had to be withdrawn. This is a rather scarce record as a result, and indeed my copy is not the officially released version but a pre-release promo which was apparently originally sent to the staff at "Juke Box Jury". I have no idea whether it made it on to the show or not.

"The Avengers" following was mighty enough that the 1964 novelty single "Kinky Boots" by stars Patrick MacNee and Honor Blackman charted at number 5 in the UK in 1990 following support from the then Radio One DJ Simon Mayo. Nobody thought to give "Dearest Emma" a proper outing around the same time, and it remained rotting in the vaults. Such is life.

1 January 2015

A total mystery, this one - a record which, according to most vinyl cataloguing sites online, doesn't even exist. Naturally, scarcity is no guarantee of value and I managed to pick it up for less than the price of a glossy magazine.

As you might suspect, "Over My Head" is a cover of the Fleetwood Mac track, only given a particularly sultry Marshall Hain treatment. Electronic keyboards coo underneath a shuffling rhythm and a male and female duet, and it sounds slightly more date-stamped than the original. This kind of hushed, silky smooth, slightly dancefloor orientated MOR was all over the late-night FM airwaves during the late seventies and very early eighties, and brings to mind the sleeve (and occasionally music) of the K-Tel compilation "Night Moves". That it's stylistically firmly locked in that era doesn't render it irrelevant, however - I've a sneaking appreciation for this single, and if I'd ever been sleazy enough to have a bedroom seduction tape, I'm sure it might have made its way on. And I'm sure it would have improved my prospects with the opposite sex little.

The Crying Shames are also a mystery, and for reasons more intriguing than usual. They appear to have only had one other single out on Logo (although as this one was largely unaccounted for by the Internet, there may be others hidden away). Entitled "That's Rock 'n' Roll", it was credited as featuring Andy Taylor, who online auctioneers and record dealers alike have always assumed was occasional "Left and to the Back" reader Andy Taylor out of Duran Duran. However, he has consistently denied any involvement. As the single also pre-dates the release of their debut single "Planet Earth" by six months, it's also unlikely that a credit for his work would have given the record any particular advantages even if he had worked his way on to the track then subsequently forgotten the entire session.

Anyway, if you know more, drop me a comment. And Happy New Year! There are lots of interesting records coming up over the next few weeks, so please stick with us.

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Can't download the mp3s or zip files? Baffled by the point of this blog? Please go to the FAQ first of all. Your answer should be there.

NOTE - you can also join our Facebook group by clicking on this link or alternatively feel free to be a Twitter follower. My personal site where you can find out more about my writing can also be found here.

"Left and to the Back" is a blog exploring the dark and dusty world of flop singles and albums, the kind you may find lingering near the stock room of your local second hand record store (if you still have one), or perhaps going for extortionate sums on ebay.

For a better idea about the kind of music featured, both sublime and ridiculous, please go to our Spotify playlist here. Please note that L&TTB is not primarily a sixties blog, even though a lot of good "lost" material was released around this era and will be featured. In short, if I like it and it's interesting, I'll upload it. And sometimes if I don't like it but it's interesting, it will also feature.

The music uploaded to this site is for evaluation only, and where it is otherwise available at a reasonable price I would persuade you to support your local second hand record store by buying it. Many of the posts on here are about digging around in these shops and being thrilled by ridiculous and obscure finds, and I hope I'm persuading a few more readers to get out there and dig around. So please do dig. Man. No blog or download site can ever be an effective substitute.